


Make it Better

by Skarabrae_stone



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grieving, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 12:38:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16086263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skarabrae_stone/pseuds/Skarabrae_stone
Summary: After Dr. Erskine is killed, Steve comforts Peggy.





	Make it Better

_And anytime you feel the pain, hey, Jude, refrain_  
_Don't carry the world upon your shoulders_  
_For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool_  
_By making this world a little colder._

_\--"Hey Jude", the Beatles  
_

 

Steve is still in the midst of a gaggle of politicians and lackeys when he sees Agent Carter leave. She does so quietly, chin up, back straight, and it hits him that _he’s_ only known Dr. Erskine for a few weeks, but _she_ worked with him for _months_. She’s the one who smuggled him out of Germany, who convinced the SSR to take him on and fund his project.

If Steve feels like there’s a hole torn open in his chest, a tide of grief just waiting to come crashing in the moment everyone stops _talking_ at him, he can’t imagine how she feels. Well, no, he can. He knows exactly how it feels to lose someone you’re close to, and she doesn’t even have a Bucky to hug her or pat her back while she cries.

 _She shouldn’t be alone_ , he thinks, and the thought galvanizes him to action, breaking through the bewildered daze he’s been in since the HYDRA agent died in front of him.

He extricates himself somehow, makes halfhearted excuses and endures Senator Brandt’s handshake and Colonel Phillips’s glare with as much equanimity as he can muster. The moment he’s out of their sight, he lengthens his stride, nearly running as he navigates the unfamiliar halls.

It takes a couple of wrong turns and asking for directions three separate times, but he finds Agent Carter’s room eventually, and knocks on the door before he can think better of it.

The door opens, and he suddenly wishes he’d taken a little more time to think of what to say.

Agent Carter’s face is composed, her posture as perfect as ever, but she’s let her hair out of its pins, tumbling loose around her face, and taken off her jacket and tie. Her cheeks are dry, but her eyes are red.

“Steven,” she says, surprised. “What are you doing here?”

He really should have thought this through.

“I, uh, I saw you leave.” _Great, Steve, now you sound like some kind of creep._ It’s already out of his mouth, though, so he hurries on, trying to cover it up. “What I mean is, uh, it didn’t seem like—I know you and Dr. Erskine were close, and I thought you might—want some. Company?”

On that last word, she pulls herself straighter, expression hardening. “No, thank you, Private. I am quite capable of looking after myself.”

She starts to close the door, and in a panic he blurts out, “No, wait, Agent Carter—I didn’t mean that—however you thought I meant. I think.”

This makes her pause, hand still on the door. She raises her eyebrows, apparently waiting for him to continue.

“I’m sorry,” he says woefully, “I’m not—good at. Talking. I haven’t—not the point. What I meant is, I...” He stalls out again, not sure how to express what he means without offending her. “I didn’t mean to imply that you can’t—handle yourself,” he says after a moment, because he’s pretty sure that’s what this boils down to.

She relaxes ever so slightly, though she still looks distinctly unimpressed. “Then what _did_ you mean?”

She’s on edge, he realizes, defensive the way he always is when anyone casts aspersions on his size, or his abilities, or—well, anything, really. Just like him, she’s constantly trying to prove herself in a world that’s always slamming doors in her face. If he wants her to trust him, he’s going to have to make himself vulnerable, too.

“When my ma died,” he says quietly, “I left straight after the funeral. Didn’t want to see no one, didn’t want their pity. But my friend—he came and found me. Said I shouldn’t be alone, not when—not with that.” He takes a breath. “I could have got by on my own. But having a, a friend, to help me through—it made it... better. Easier. A little, anyway.”

He risks looking her in the face. The defensiveness is gone, leaving... surprise, maybe, and something softer that he can’t quite identify.

“I’m not trying to—to barge in,” he says. “If you really would rather be alone—or if there’s someone else you’d rather, I can track ‘em down for you—I just...” He trails off, a bit helpless, and shrugs. “I thought maybe you could use a friend.”

There’s a long, quiet moment while she contemplates him, eyes slightly narrowed as though he’s a math equation she’s calculating in her head, and he tries not to fidget. Then she nods, decisive, and steps backward.

“Very well. I suppose—maybe I could.”

 

It’s awkward, because of course it is.

They sit on her bed, stiff and silent, for about a minute and a half before Steve finally says, “He was a really great guy.”

“He was,” she says with a sigh. “He... yes. He was.”

“He said you rescued him?”

And so she tells him about infiltrating a Nazi base, about befriending a captive Jewish scientist and subsequently smuggling him out, about the long and eventful journey, first to England, and then to America.

 At some point in her recollections, she starts crying, and Steve hesitantly puts his arm around her. He half expects her to flinch away from him, but instead, she presses her face to his chest, shoulders shaking, and he draws her close and rocks her back and forth, the way his mother used to do for him when he was small.

He doesn’t know how to talk to women—the serum didn’t change that. But Steve is intimately familiar with grief, knows it inside and out, and he knows how to hold onto someone who’s hurting. He’s still very unused to this new body—it doesn’t feel like his, it feels like stealing someone else’s car and trying to drive it around—but he’s stupidly grateful for the way it lets him wrap himself around her, giving her the sort of silent comfort that Bucky excels at.

He can’t help smiling a little at that—of the idea that Peggy is so like him, small and under-estimated, prickly and defensive, and that he has somehow, in the couple of hours since he came out of Stark’s contraption, taken on Bucky’s role of defender and comforter. _Saint Bucky_ , he thinks. _Healer of all ills._ A little thrill goes through him as he remembers that he’s in the Army now, that Brandt has said he’ll give him a chance to _help_ —maybe it won’t be too long until he sees Bucky again, and they can fight side by side, like he can’t help believing they’re meant to.

Agent Carter hiccoughs and sits up, scrubbing at her eyes. Steve silently hands her a handkerchief, and looks away so she can blow her nose in peace.

When he chances another glance back at her, he finds her already watching him. She looks very soft this way, with her red nose and eyes and tangled curls, and the sort of melancholy looseness in her bearing that Steve associates with convalescence and the easing of pain. There’s a little crease between her eyebrows, though, like that math problem came back just when she thought she had it licked.

His stomach does a funny swooping thing that he’s pretty sure means trouble. “What?” he asks.

She drops her gaze, focusing instead on the damp handkerchief in her hand. “I don’t know. I suppose... I’m not used to this.”

“This?”

“Just—” She laughs, though there’s little mirth in it, and shakes her head. “Steven—”

“Steve, please.”

“Steve, then.” She sighs, rubbing her forehead with the heel of her hand. “I worked very hard to get here, Steve. I had to be smarter, tougher, better at _everything_ than any other man in my position—and a lot of men far above me, to be honest. I cannot afford to show an ounce of weakness, ever; I can never be less than perfect. And I—do you know how _exhausting_ that is?”

“I do, actually,” he says. “Well, not the being perfect part, but—I’ve been fighting since I was born, since the doctors said I wouldn’t make it to the end of the month. Just to be taken seriously, just to be treated like—well, like a man, I guess.”

“I suppose that’s why.”

He gives her a questioning look, and she elaborates.

“I mean, I suppose that’s why you’re—different. Look at me, breaking down in front of you like that, and you—you’re not treating me any differently.”

“Of course not,” he says, indignant. “Your friend just died—got _murdered_ in front of us— it’s natural you’re upset. Hel—heck, _I’m_ upset, and I only knew him for a few weeks. It doesn’t make you any less—qualified. Competent.”

She shakes her head, smiling a little. “Well. I—appreciate it, Steve.”

His stomach does the swooping thing again when she says his name, and his chest goes all warm and fuzzy the way it does when Bucky slings an arm around his shoulders and leans down to talk in his good ear, lips brushing against his skin. _Stop it_ , he tells his body, but it doesn’t listen to him. Some things, apparently, never change.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he says after a moment.

“Whatever for?”

“For what I said earlier, in the car—on the way here?” He glances at her, and sees what he’s pretty sure is amusement gleaming in her eyes.

“Oh?”

“I just—” He rubs the back of his neck, self-conscious. “I shouldn’t’ve said that. About women. I hadn’t any right to—to think a woman wouldn’t want to—wouldn’t want the same things as me or—or Colonel Phillips or anyone else. Fighting the war and everything. So I—I’m sorry.”

“I think I can forgive you, Steve,” she says, and that glint of amusement is still there. “Since you don’t know how to talk to women, and all.”

He grins at her, comfortable in his role of being mocked. “I’ll have you know I can talk to Mrs. Gellner at the fishmonger’s just _fine_.”

Agent Carter looks as though she’s fighting to suppress a laugh. “She must be a very special woman, then.”

“She is,” he says earnestly. “She’s about a hundred years old, and I haggled with her over salted cod for twenty minutes just last month.”

This time, she does burst out laughing, pressing a hand against his bicep as though to steady herself. “Oh, Steve, you charmer.”

“I got her to go down a whole five cents, too,” he tells her proudly, and tries not to grin like an idiot when she honest-to-God snorts with laughter.

They sit quiet for a moment after that, Steve still glowing with the knowledge that _he_ made _Agent Carter_ laugh.

Somewhere outside, a bell tolls the hour, and Agent Carter heaves a sigh.

“You’d better go, Steve. They’ll be looking for you.”

He gets up, suddenly awkward all over again. “Oh—yeah, you’re right.” He heads to the door, then hesitates, realizing that he has no real idea what will happen next, to either of them. “If I don’t—see you—”

“I’ll come and say goodbye, don’t worry,” she says with a smile, but he can already see the tension beginning to cloud her face again, all the worries about tomorrow that he hasn’t had to face yet. “I know where to find you, after all.”

“Oh good,” he says, and flushes. “I—I mean—”

“Stop, you’ll only put your foot in and make it worse.”

“Okay. Shutting up now. I’ll, uh, I’ll see you around.”

He opens the door and promptly bangs into the door frame, having forgotten that his shoulders are wider now. “Oh, God da—darn it.”

“You needn’t worry about swearing in front of me, you know,” she says following him to the door. “I’m not going to faint if I hear strong language.”

“Oh, I’m so—”

“Don’t apologize, it’s quite alright.”

“Oh—okay,” he says, still a little off-balance, and decides to retreat before he makes even more of a fool of himself. “Well… g’night.”

“Goodnight, Steve. Oh, and Steve…”

He turns back, to see her fixing him with that soft look, the one he can’t quite decipher.

“Thank you,” she says quietly. “You were right—I—needed the company.”

He can _feel_ his ears turning red; apparently that hasn’t changed, either. “It was—I—I’m glad I could help, Agent Carter.”

The corner of her mouth quirks upward. “I think, given the circumstances, you can call me Peggy.”

“ _Oh_ ,” he says, and his mind goes utterly blank for several seconds. He feels like he’s been given an incredible gift, and doesn’t know quite what to do with it. “I—then, I—I guess—Goodnight, Peggy.”

“Goodnight,” she echoes, and shuts the door.

As he walks down the hall, he starts to whistle, unconscious of it until he notices the tune, and has to laugh at himself: _Goodnight, Irene, Goodnight, Irene, I’ll see you in my dreams…_

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "Hey Jude" by the Beatles.  
> The conversation they reference ("in the car") is where Steve says something along the lines of, "I don't know why a beautiful woman would want to join the Army".


End file.
